Chrome-plated wonder

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This little chrome-plated wonder is one of the smallest MP3
players with a hard disk drive. It's about the size of a business
card (and looks a bit like one of those metal business-card
holders) and is about 1cm thick. The capacity is 1.5GB or, in plain
English, it's able to store 375 songs (25 hours). The mirrored
finish is eye-catching and looks like no other digital audio player
on the market (also available in blue or red).

However, much has been sacrificed in pursuit of size and style.
For a start, there's no LCD screen on the player. This has been
shunted to the wired remote, which is finished in matching chrome.
The limited control buttons along the edge of the player are small
and you have to rely entirely on audio feedback to let you know
that a push has been registered. The remote is easier to use, with
a push-button jog-dial to navigate its small menu system.

Features are also limited. There are only four equaliser presets
(including normal) with no provision for the custom tweaking of
sound. Playlists can't be created within the player, but it does
have a Favourites feature that lets you tag songs to add to a
single list. Music tracks must be transferred using the supplied
software, which converts it into a format the player accepts.
Dragging and dropping MP3 files into the Aiwa manually doesn't work
and it won't recognise any formats other than MP3.

This limits its versatility a great deal and means it won't work
with Macs, even though it is recognised as a portable drive in OS
X.

One unique and useful feature is the oddly named Music Charger
mode, which allows you to store about four songs into a cache
memory so that you can use it while you are exercising without
worrying about damaging the hard disk.

Despite the ultra-thin funky styling, the HZWS2000S just doesn't
deliver enough at this price, especially considering the ultra-cool
iPod mini and Creative Muvo2 both cost less than $400 and have 4GB
of storage.